On first read, it might have been a hoax. On International Human Rights Day last month, the U.S. ambassador to Mexico, Anthony Wayne, “celebrated” Mexico’s human rights achievements. “The United States recognizes the Mexican government, including officials and institutions,” he wrote in the newspaper El Universal, “for its efforts to promote the defense of human rights in Mexico.”
If Obama wants to bolster his legacy in his second term, he can and should get tough on some of the United States' most unsavory friends and allies. Here are eight leaders to start with.
How could thriving Monterrey, the “Sultan of the North,” which only years earlier had been deemed one of the safest cities in Latin America, descend so quickly into chaos? If it could happen here, was anywhere in Mexico safe for long?
Federico Campbell offers a rare, uplifting story of a city’s emergence from the violence of Mexico’s drug war. Similarly, Mexico’s president, Felipe Calderón, has held up Tijuana as a model for his government’s counternarcotics strategy. But the numbers tell a different story.
President Obama has rightly recognized the United States' shared responsibility for confronting Mexico's violent drug cartels. But by failing to pressure Mexico to uphold the human rights requirements agreed to under the Merida Initiative, the Obama administration is shirking an important part of this responsibility.
The Aug. 13 editorial "Mexico's Drug War" asserted that it would be "counterproductive" for the United States to let human rights concerns hold up the release of funds to support Mexico's fight against drug cartels. In fact, the opposite is true.
It's been a long time since the days of back-alley abortions in the U.S. Perhaps that's why South Dakota Gov. Michael Rounds signed into law a ban against abortion in his state, with one narrow exception: protecting the life of the pregnant woman.
Perhaps Rounds, who was only 19 when Roe vs. Wade was decided in 1973, doesn't remember what it was like to live in a country where women had no right to a safe, legal abortion. But there is a place he could visit if he wants to refresh his memory: Latin America.
Immigrant workers make up the majority of the labor force in the U.S. meat and poultry industry. This submission offers the case of immigrant workers in the meat and poultry industry in the United States as evidence of failure by the U.S. government to assure respect for workers’ human rights.
When Mexican President Vicente Fox visits President Bush's Texas ranch this week, the two will discuss a range of issues that revolve around law enforcement — illegal drug traffic, border security and migration. But there is another critical area of law enforcement where the United States should collaborate with Mexico: providing documents that could help prosecute crimes from Mexico's "dirty war" in the 1970s and early '80s.
On first read, it might have been a hoax. On International Human Rights Day last month, the U.S. ambassador to Mexico, Anthony Wayne, “celebrated” Mexico’s human rights achievements. “The United States recognizes the Mexican government, including officials and institutions,” he wrote in the newspaper El Universal, “for its efforts to promote the defense of human rights in Mexico.”